


Just Thorough

by Valeris



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Darcy Lewis & Sam Wilson Friendship, Darcyland, F/M, M/M, Past Darcy Lewis/Sam Wilson, Past Riley/Sam Wilson, Sam Wilson is a Gift
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-25 21:18:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4976911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valeris/pseuds/Valeris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy's never really considered herself promiscuous; she's just thorough.  Hooking up with her ex's new husband's best friend is a little... complicated, though.  Even for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Darcy was two drinks in when Steve’s best man collapsed in the chair next to her, looking as miserable as she felt.  His suit had the wrinkled look of something rented that had been worn more than once, and he stared at one of her shot glasses with the kind of undisguised hunger she was more accustomed to on the homeless.  He was freshly shaven, and he’d pulled his hair up, but it was obvious that keeping it together through whatever duties a best man was expected to perform was wearing on him.

“Go for it.”  She told him, nodding towards the vodka.  He held the glass up, and Darcy clinked it with her screwdriver, taking a gulp in solidarity while he downed the shot.  

“So, you with the groom, or the groom?”  Bucky asked, eyeing the next glass on the tray Darcy had commandeered from the bar, and she made a Vanna White gesture at it, inviting him to help himself.

“Sam’s side.”  Darcy answered, rolling her eyes.  “And, seriously, how can you not know that?  I was his best man.  We were literally standing next to each other for the whole wedding, asshole.”

Bucky paused, glass halfway to his mouth, and squinted at her.  “You were wearing a suit?”  He said, obviously guessing.

“…Yes.  I was the woman in the suit.”  Darcy enunciated slowly.  “I still am.  I am wearing it  _right now_.”

Bucky grunted, shrugged, and finished his drink.  “I was distracted.”  He muttered, almost sulky about it, like he was expecting her to yell at him.  Darcy considered it, but he seemed pretty pathetic, and she could already see Sam and Steve cutting through the dance floor on the way over to them.  It didn’t seem like a good time to pick a fight.

“Darcy!  My favorite ex girlfriend.”  Sam greeted, holding open his arms, and Darcy obligingly jumped into them.  One of the benefits of wearing a suit instead of a bridesmaids dress was that, now, when she wrapped her legs around his waist for stability, it didn’t feel lewd.  “That’s all I am to you?”  Darcy demanded, not letting go, until Sam laughed and kissed her on the forehead with a smacking sound.  “Your favorite ex girlfriend?  You only have two, and the other one slashed your car tires.”

Bucky muttered something under his breath that got him elbowed by Steve, but when Darcy raised her eyebrows at him, he didn’t seem inclined to repeat himself.  Steve smiled in a smoothing-over-the-moment kind of way, but as always it was sincere and sweet and, essentially, all the reasons why someone would want to marry him.  “We were just about to head out,”  He explained, glancing over his shoulder at the rest of the reception, which was quickly descending into anarchy,  “And, well, we wanted to let you know.”

His gaze caught on the tray of shots sitting on the table, and he frowned.  Darcy saw Bucky’s shoulders draw in, and Darcy grabbed a glass and downed it.

Steve gave her a worried look, but relaxed when Sam laughed.  “Don’t worry about Darcy, Cap.”  Sam advised, giving his husband’s shoulder a squeeze.  “She can drink anyone under the table.  One time, after Riley–”  He paused, and cleared his throat, and something flitting across his face before he smiled again,  “Saw her drink a whole bottle, and she was still ready to walk downtown and get pancakes at midnight.  You got the two of them together, her and Riley, they could’ve probably decimated Tony Stark’s liquor cabinet.”

Darcy knocked a fist against her side, and grinned.  “Cast iron livers run in the family.”  She agreed, and kissed Sam’s cheek.  When she repeated the process on Steve he looked surprised, but not displeased.

“Okay, shoo.”  Darcy told them firmly, making brushing gestures with her hands in the air.  “Go, honeymoon.”

As soon as they were around the corner, Darcy let herself stop smiling.

Bucky cleared his throat, and Darcy realized he’d pulled her chair out for her.  “Wanna get drunk with me?”  He offered, polite as if he were asking her out for coffee, and she laughed.

“I want to try.”  Darcy agreed, sitting down.

 

Darcy had never gotten blackout drunk in her entire life, and the night of Sam and Steve’s wedding was not an exception.  There was no confused haze blurring what had happened.  She remembered everything.

Even if she hadn’t, the evidence was overwhelming.  She’d awoken naked in a hotel room with a not unpleasant soreness in certain key muscles, like the inside of her thighs, and her sheets smelled like someone else’s sweat and cologne.  And there was an open condom wrapper on the bedside table next to a discarded bow tie and a half-full glass of water.

It didn't take Sherlock to deduce she'd had sex.

Darcy checked the space in the bed beside her, and was relieved to find it empty.  It was too much to hope for that she’d never run into him again, but at least he’d had the sense to get while the getting was good, and then get the hell out of her room.

If he was as good at keeping his mouth shut as he was at sneaking out of bedrooms, Darcy thought this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.


	2. Chapter 2

Bucky hadn’t had any intention of telling anyone he’d slept with Darcy.  It was a dumb shit thing to do, but it had been the least destructive bad decision on offer, and he’d jumped at it.  Better to go to bed with a pretty stranger than to drink himself stupid alone.

But as soon as he walked into work on Monday, Natasha zeroed in on him.  

“You’ve had sex.” She accused.

“How the fuck--” He blurted out before he could think better of it, because there was no goddamned way.  There was nothing to give him away.  No hickies, no wearing last night’s clothes, no smell.  It had been three days.  He’d showered.  Twice.

“You got drunk at the wedding and slept with one of the… Were there bridesmaids?”  Natasha asked, momentarily distracted.

“No.  No bridesmaids.”  It was technically true.

Natasha waved that unimportant detail away, tapping a pen against her teeth while she thought.  “Steve’s getting married, and you’re there, thinking about how pathetic and alone you are… it makes sense.”  She twirled her chair in a half circle, tipping her head back to keep eye contact with him.  “So.  How was it?”

Bucky had been trying not to think about ‘how it was’, very hard, ever since it had happened.

He knew that sitting down at his desk and feigning an intense interest in his notes for the CDC piece wasn’t going to work.

“You know I’ll get it out of you.” Natasha sing-songed, her voice getting a little strange as she spun her chair.  “And don’t pull that ‘a gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell’ because we both know that’s bullshit.”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Nat, can you leave it be?” Bucky could hear the note of real pleading in his voice; if this was an argument with Steve, he’d be melting like a pat of butter on a sidewalk in August.

Natasha just ginned, scenting blood in the water.  “You did something.”  She diagnosed, looking delighted.  “Something you don’t want to admit to, and considering what you have admitted to in the past…”

Bucky kept a completely blank face, flipping through his notepad as if he were absorbing any of the information that it contained, trying to achieve a zen mind like a pool of still water or some other new age garbage that might protect him from having his mind read by the best reporter in Washington.  Natasha’s prefered method of questioning was something like a con man doing a cold reading-- throwing out dozens of suggestions and watching your face like a hawk to see what made you flinch.

She explored every avenue from ‘first gay experience’ to ‘someone’s grandmother’ without getting near the truth.  It was somehow beyond even Natasha’s fertile imagination that he might have had the best sex of his life in a Marriot by the interstate after being drank under the table.

 _She held her liquor better than me,_ he thought mournfully, his mind wandering from Natasha’s litany of suggestions.   _And I know there’s no way for me to objectively judge, but I’m pretty sure she’s a better lay than I am._

Bucky did not feel that he excelled in many areas, but sex was definitely one of them.  He’d grown to expect a certain level of reaction from women in the aftermath; comparisons to past lovers that made him feel a little bad for the poor sods, philosophical meditations on the meaning of life, hell, at  _least_ an attempt to get his number in an effort to secure a repeat performance.

But when he’d asked Darcy what she was thinking, she’d said, “I want orange juice.” and climbed naked out of the bed to take a jug of it out of the mini fridge and drink directly from the carton.  Then she’d gotten back under the covers and fallen asleep.

When Bucky had gotten out of bed, he’d immediately collapsed because his legs wouldn’t work.

He was feeling a little… disgruntled about it.

 

After years of being told that her ‘lifestyle’ would ruin her life, Darcy had been a little smug when it had gotten her a job.  Granted, infectious disease control wasn’t exactly in her major, but who even expected that in this economy?  Just living outside of your parents basement was an accomplishment these days, let alone getting a job with a 401k and a salary that made it almost not financially devastating to live in one of the most expensive cities in the country.

The first time Jane had called Darcy to (politely) inform her that she might need to be tested for ‘a virulent STI’, her tone had been cold and impersonal, so much so that Darcy hadn’t been entirely certain she wasn’t speaking to a very intuitive robot.  Later she would discover that this was because on the three phone calls preceding hers, the women had burst into tears, and Jane was terrified that even the slightest hint of sympathy would elicit hysterics.

Darcy thanked the possible robot she would come to know as Jane, assured her that she always practiced safe sex, and agreed to make an appointment with her doctor at her earliest convenience.  When she was handed a clean bill of health, Darcy forgot about it.

There were whispers on the news of a new contagious disease, but the news loved to name things dramatically and act like everyone was dying.  Darcy had mentally classed this ‘Tesseract’ as this month’s bird flu epidemic, and took no steps to learn more about it.  She never thought it would be a real epidemic.

The next time Darcy speaks to Jane, she’s missed three phone calls from her, and she definitely doesn’t sound like a robot.

Her greeting is exhaled in one frantic breath. “Hello, this is Jane Foster, calling from the CDC, what are your symptoms, have you been admitted to a hospital?”

“...I don’t have any symptoms?”  Darcy had responded, once she could parse Jane’s utterance into individual words.  “I got tested like you asked me to, but there wasn’t anything wrong.  I told you, I’m safe.”

“You don’t understand, it’s transmitted by saliva, this is an extremely--” Jane began to argue, and then stopped.  “You’re not sick.”

“Bright eyed and bushy tailed as always.” Darcy promised, feeling the need to reassure this (obviously) high strung woman.

“You don’t have Tesseract.” Jane repeated again, and then hung up the phone.

Darcy actually considered calling her back, because she seemed like she might not be okay, but in the end she opted for the much more satisfying option of watching Dog Cops and eating chocolate fudge chunk ice cream in her pajamas.

That was exactly what she was doing when Jane knocked on her door, clutching a bag full of empty glass vials and a puncture kit.

It was only because she was tiny and adorable that Darcy let her in after she decided it would be best to open negotiations by pounding insistently on her front door, shouting, “I believe you may be a medical miracle, and I need your blood.”

That wasn’t how she had gotten her job, of course, but it had been a good ice breaker.  Jane was a fantastic scientist, but terrible at public outreach.  She was horrible on the phone, and even worse in person.  Why her boss had ever thought Jane would be a good ‘ambassador to the schools’, Darcy would never know.  She had never been more vicariously embarrassed for another person as she was during one of Jane’s condom demonstrations.

“I want to be back at the lab, doing  _real_ work!” Jane complained, rubbing her hands against her jeans to get the lube that had been on the condoms off.  “I am this close to a vaccine, now that we have your blood.  I could be doing something more important than--”

“Saving lives?” Darcy suggested, glaring.  She loved pouring some real sexual health information into the thirsty minds of America’s youth, enough to do it for free.  

Jane pulled an apologetic face, then sighed and rested her cheek against her knees.  “I wish you could just do this.” She mumbled.  Then sat up straight, like she’d been struck by lightning.

The funding hadn’t been easy to get, but it hadn’t been impossible, and no one could deny that Darcy was great at her job.  She was completely impervious to dick related embarrassment, and even if some of the parents weren’t fans, she was popular with the students at every school she visited.

Which is how she came to be sitting in Jane’s office, waiting for a couple of reporters from the Washington Post on the Monday after Steve and Sam’s wedding.

Bucky looked different when he wasn’t sweating out a bottle of Grey Goose, his stubble giving off more of a male model vibe than a homeless one.  He was dressed casually, but his arms looked good in that t-shirt, and Darcy found herself actually regretting not getting his number.

Right up until he tried to introduce himself to her like they’d never met.


	3. Chapter 3

Bucky was entirely certain that government employees were not supposed to dress like that.

They were business clothes, sure, but representatives of the CDC were supposed to be wearing oversized sweaters with a little bit of mustard from lunch smeared down the front.  They weren’t supposed to look like some kind of sexy librarian fantasy.  She had on cuban heeled stockings, for christ sake.  He’d never even seen them outside of film noir movies set in France, but he was pretty sure they only came in thigh highs.

Which meant garters.

It took every bland mental image Bucky could muster to keep his face blank.  He conjured snow banks and sand in hourglasses and sailboats on an ocean that was flat as a pane of glass, and then he held out his hand and said, “Hi, I’m James Barnes from the Washington Post, and this is my colleague Natasha Romanoff.”

If he had been spending more time paying attention to her face, and less to her probable underwear, Bucky might have realized that she wasn’t planning on playing along with any plan that involved discretion.

Darcy stared at his outstretched hand, and her lip curled.  “We’ve already met.” The disgust in her tone was so palpable and caustic that Bucky took a step back involuntarily.  “Steve’s wedding?”

He refused to look at Natasha.  “...Oh, right.” He said, attempting a smile that was unconvincing even to him.

Darcy stared at him like she was waiting for something, eyes narrowed.  When she finally turned to greet Natasha, Bucky felt like he’d lost a few years of his life.

“It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Romanoff.  I’m Darcy Lewis, and I’ll be answering any preliminary questions you have for the next fifteen minutes while Dr. Foster finishes a few of her more time sensitive experiments.” Her smile was sincere and charming, and Bucky was drawn to the red shine of her lips like a baby with an attraction to shiny things and no sense of object permanence.

 _She’s super pissed at you,_ he reminded himself, nodding along with whatever she was saying about budget constraints.

When she stood to begin the tour of the facility, it was obvious from the way her skirt fell that she was definitely wearing a garter belt.

 

 _If he looks down my shirt when I lean on the counter to hook up the projector, I am going to push him down a flight of stairs,_ Darcy thought, giving Natasha a sunny smile when she offered her a hand to help her down from the table she’d had to climb on to check the connection when Jane’s power point wouldn’t show.

Bucky hadn’t helped her down, of course, because he was busy staring at her legs.  

Darcy didn’t get ogled this much by the  _actual_ teenage boys she taught.  It would almost be flattering if it wasn’t so annoying.

After his introduction, he’d left Natasha to carry the majority of the interview, contributing the occasional ‘hmm’.  He seemed to be there primarily to pretend to take notes, and pretend to not know her.

It was a relief when Jane rushed into the room in a cloud of science, and Darcy could move to the back where Bucky couldn’t see her without craning his neck.

He hadn’t exactly come off as suave at the wedding, but there had been a sort of brooding hot mess thing going on.  It was the whole reason she’d slept with him-- he’d given her the impression that he was the kind of guy who could hit it and quit it with a minimum of whining and protestations of love.  A no-strings attached good time.

 _This_ Bucky seemed, frankly, like kind of a spaz.  That could have its appeal (she’d certainly ushered enough awkward introverts into manhood), but it wasn’t really what she was looking for at this point in her life.

 _You already have enough nerds,_ she reminded herself, when she found her eyes straying to what she knew from experience were rock-hard thighs.   _You just got Ian to stop following you around with heart eyes._

“We all know how seriously efforts to fight Tesseract have been hindered by its premature characterization as an STI.”  Jane began, voice steady with the familiarity of repetition as she flipped to the first image, a hospital room with a patient with the blue-stained eyes of someone in the late stages of the illness.

“The inherent stigma of so-called ‘sexually transmitted’ diseases is common knowledge, even though many are most often transmitted through entirely non-sexual means.”  Jane continued, and the image changed to a closeup of an elementary school girl with a cold sore.  “An STI diagnosis is met with shame, and thus most sufferers do not share their status with those that they have a potential to infect.  This prevents a serious issue for those wishing to combat the spread of these illnesses.  However, the CDC is developing some exciting new possibilities.”

The slide switched to a picture of a blond man with a mustache, and Darcy saw Natasha straighten.  “Gaetan Dugas, the bisexual flight attendant who was initially thought to be Patient Zero for the AIDS epidemic, is one of the most memorable recent examples of how one active infected patient can precipitate an outbreak.  Such individuals are usually used as a cautionary tale about the consequences of promiscuity.  I take a different view.”

The next slide, at first, looked like a star map, until you examined the dots of light and saw the tiny numbers identifying them.  “This is an index of patents who were not infected.”  Jane announced.  “At the center, we see an individual with the ability to be a Gaetan Dugas.  She was exposed to Tesseract by an unwitting carrier.  She had every opportunity to become one herself, but, she did not.  And, in fact,  _none_ of her subsequent partners have yet been infected with Tesseract, despite (according to self-reporting) having active sex lives.”

Jane swung around to glance at Darcy, and then dropped the bomb.  “After meticulous research, I could come to no other explanation than that the individual in question might have some sort of anti-virus, possibly one that could be spread in the same manner as Tesseract itself-- through saliva.  The patient in question was very adamant that this was the  _only_ form of fluid transfer that had taken place in any of her assignations.”

Jane slid her thumb up the remote, and her slide widened to show the entire spread of the anti-virus until Darcy’s cluster was still recognizable, but you could see others, tiny galaxies in a mostly dark sky.  “As you can see, there are several points of more active rates of infection-- individuals who spread the anti-virus at an extraordinary rate.  This led me to a revolutionary idea; instead of seeing these (for lack of a better word) super infectors as the enemy of those looking to stop the spread of infectious diseases, why not harness them?”

Natasha’s voice was sharp and startling, the first question she had asked Jane since their introduction.  “Doctor Foster, are you proposing medical experimentation on members of the public who might not consent to being exposed to this ‘anti-virus’?”

“The public has already been exposed to the anti-virus,”  Jane pointed out, gesturing to the chart.  “Without any malicious intent, on the part of the CDC or those spreading it, we were unintentionally provided with enough cases to extrapolate what, if any, negative effects might be anticipated.”

“And what negative side effects were there?”  Natasha asked, her eyes very intent on Jane’s face.

Jane shrugged.  “One patient reported developing freckles, and a second flu-like symptoms that lasted a day or two.  Other than that, nothing significant has come to light, despite many patients submitting to a full battery of tests.  These side effects are obviously vastly superior to the known effects of Tesseract.”

“So, in your ideal world, the CDC would allow this ‘anti-virus’ to infect the population unchecked.” Natasha said, and Darcy winced at the phrasing, already seeing how it would look in print.

Jane looked the reporter straight in the eyes.  “In my ideal world, we would vaccinate as many super infectors as possible, as fast as possible, and yes.  We would let it spread.”

 

There were very few follow-up questions after that, and Darcy was glad for the chance to flee the tense room as soon as she flipped the overhead lights back on.  She didn’t know if she was paranoid that, somehow, she would be exposed as one of those ‘super infectors’, or if she just wanted to avoid talking to Bucky.

_Do not follow me into the hallway, do not follow me into the--_

“Darcy!” The door wasn’t even completely closed before he said her name, in a secretive hiss that practically screamed ‘we need to talk’.

 _You are the worst ‘discreet hookup’ I have ever had,_ Darcy thought in despair, turning around resignedly.

“Look, I know I fucked up pretending not to know you,”  He started, which seemed promising.  

And then he immediately lost any ground he had gained.  “But Natasha was there, and I didn’t think you’d want to deal with her, you know,  _knowing_.”

Darcy felt her eyebrows hit her hairline.  “ _Yes_.” She agreed, drawing the word out long.  “Because if you admitted to knowing me, obviously everyone would immediately assume that we’d slept together.”  She left the reasons why unspoken.  “We couldn’t have just met at the wedding.”

“You don’t know Nat!” Bucky insisted, running a hand through his hair in a harried fashion.  “She’s like a fucking witch or something.  She just  _knows._   It’s terrifying.”

Darcy didn’t roll her eyes, but it was not because she didn’t want to.  “Whatever.  It’s not like she’d need to be.”

Bucky frowned in confusion, giving her a strangely earnest look under his eyelashes, and Darcy really  _did_ roll her eyes.  “Dude, you could not have been more obvious if you’d opened with ‘Oh, hey!  Long time no see!  It’s me, Bucky!  You got drunk at Steve’s wedding and had sex with me three days ago, remember?’.”

When he bit his lip, Darcy had a (not unpleasant) flashback to the last time she’d seen that expression.

“Point.”  He admitted, showing a dangerously attractive propensity for owning his mistakes.  “Like I said, I fucked up.  It was completely my fault, and I’m sorry.”

“I accept your apology.”  Darcy told him formally, and waited for him to shake her hand and go.  But he just kept standing there, with his head tilted, like he was waiting for something from her.  

Darcy raised her eyebrows, confused as to why he was just standing there staring at her.  “So… okay.  Bye.”

Darcy flapped a hand at him, turned, and left him standing there, probably still staring at her.


	4. Chapter 4

Natasha laughed the entire way back to the office.

 _At least she waited until we got into the car_ , Bucky thought, trying to console himself as Natasha curled into herself in the passenger seat, making a choking sound.

When she finally regained her powers of speech, Bucky almost missed the laughter.

“Ah, Jesus, Barnes.” She had a hand pressed to her abdomen, as if she’d hurt herself.  “You’ve been good looking your whole life, haven’t you?”

“I don’t know what you mean by that.” Bucky admitted, sure there was an insult there somewhere but unable to find it.  Natasha nodded, straightening in her seat.

“Thought so.” She gave him a once-over, and then smirked. “You’ve never really had to try.  Throw out a couple of stock phrases, look at ‘em under your lashes, and you were in… I guess it makes sense you wouldn’t have much game.”

“I have game.” He muttered, like there was any chance of Natasha not hearing it.  “That was not a good example of my ability to… woo.”

Her eyebrows twitched at his word choice, but she seemed prepared to let it go.  “Maybe you’re better when everyone involved is drunk.”  She offered, patting him on the arm consolingly.  Bucky jerked away from her touch with enough force to make the car swerve, and Natasha snickered.

 

The day the article ran, Sam knocked on her door with coffee and bagels.  It was his traditional sympathy food, as appropriate for the day after a failed test as it was for the morning of a funeral.

Today he was wearing something closer to his ‘funeral’ face than his ‘sorry about your World History grade’ face.

“It’s not that bad.” Darcy told him, but accepted the free food and caffeine without reservation. “Shouldn’t you be honeymooning?  Spending a week in bed having wild sex and eating strawberries off of each others abs or something?”

Sam looked down at his sweats and shrugged. “We did, but… neither of us is really built for that. After the second day we were both ready to get back to work.”

“You’re both unnaturally productive.” Darcy commented around a mouthful of bagel.  “It’s oppressive.”

Sam laughed, his eyes drifting to the counter.  Despite her casual attitude, there was a copy of the Washington Post open with the sections that she thought they might get calls on highlighted, accompanying notes in the margins.  Sam picked it up and perused the work she’d already started, nodding.

“It’s gonna be pretty intense.”  He commented, smiling at the reaction faces Darcy had drawn after each paragraphs. “You ready for that? People hear ‘super infector’ and they tend to blank out that ‘anti-virus’ part.”

“It’s a gamble.” Darcy popped the lid off of her coffee to dip her bagel into it, ignoring Sam’s grunt of disgust.  “And to be honest, if it was me, I wouldn’t have done it.  People aren’t getting sick-- do they really need to know why?  But you know Jane.  Blah blah public transparency, blah blah moral integrity…”

“You think I don’t know that particular pain in the ass?” Sam asked, rolling his eyes. “I don’t know how many times I’ve had to stand there awkwardly while Steve explained to a hotel clerk that we wanted a single bed, because we were homosexuals, and were they comfortable with that?  Half of why I wanted to get married.”

“I still haven’t forgiven you for that.” Darcy reminded him with a dark look. “I thought it was you and me, Sam, but you’re just like all the others.  With their china patterns and their condos and their babies.  I saw those Facebook pictures-- I know you bought real furniture.  I feel like I don’t even _know_ you anymore, man.”

“I can promise not to have babies.”  Sam said, and then hesitated. “Although maybe Steve will want to adopt, actually, we haven’t really--”

Darcy let her head land on the counter with a thunk, and Sam stopped talking.  “I don’t wike it.” She said mulishly, voice muffled.

Knowing Darcy better than to offer a platitude about her ‘finding the right guy’, Sam patted her head. “That why you got so lit at the wedding?”

“It was an open bar, Sam.” Darcy pointed out, not unreasonably. “But yeah, I was feeling a little ‘Oh no, I’m the last single friend left, what’s happening?’.  Like, I’m really not in that place, and I don’t want to be, but since everyone else is doing it, it kind of feels like there’s something wrong with me even though I’m awesome.”

“If you’re satisfied with what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with, then you’re doing it right.” Sam kept stroking her hair, thinking of what she’d been like before he’d brought her brother back in a casket.  Darcy'd always been pretty free, dating-wise, but there was a level of emotional distance she seemed to like the maintain these days.  He could see why the idea of getting married would disturb her.  She didn’t even like to bring guys back to her apartment.

Darcy turned her head to look at the clock and made a growling noise when it showed she had half an hour to get to work.  “It’s going to be a shitshow.”

“You’re gonna call me if you need to be walked home.” It wasn’t a request.  “If you have any protesters, or get any people showing up at the lab.  I know you’ve got that taser, but that’s not enough sometimes.”

Darcy made another inarticulate grumble, which Sam took for agreement, and climbed off the counter to finish getting dressed.

 

By noon, they had decided to leave the phone off the hook.

“Is this really unprofessional?”  Jane asked, dragging her hair back from her face to secure it with a rubber band.  “It’s unprofessional, obviously, but it is _really_ unprofessional?”

“What, your hair?” Darcy asked, not looking up from her laptop.  If the phone calls were a flood, the emails were an avalanche that was going to cause her to develop carpal tunnel syndrome.  She’d been typing non-stop since she’d walked in the door, and her inbox was still in the thousands.  “The real question is, why does that matter when we locked the doors?  Like, no one’s gonna see it but me, and obviously I don’t--”

“Not the hair, the,” Jane gestured around them in a way that seemed to encompass the entirety of the morning. “The phone, and the doors, and the it just being the two of us.”

“What was it that I said to you, Jane, when you wanted to talk to the newspapers?” Darcy hit send, and pulled up the next email, making liberal use of the copy and paste function.

“That it would 'cause mass panic and everyone would hate us', and 'when it blew up in my face' you would help me, but 'your heart would be a sympathyless desert'.” Jane parroted, digging through a pile of papers on her desk and knocking half of them on the floor.  She stared at them helplessly.

“I’m not picking those up.” Darcy told her, before she could ask.

“I know.” Jane murmured, wandering around the room patting at her lab coat pockets like she thought the papers she was looking for might be inside them.  “By the way, those reporters are coming back tomorrow.”

“...Of course they are.” Darcy agreed, rubbing at the top of her sinuses where she could feel the start of pressure headache building.


	5. Chapter 5

Looking at the piles of litter and the huge, dented crater in the front door where some enterprising soul had tried to break down the front door of the CDC office, Bucky reflected that he had seen actual war zones that looked less destroyed than this.

Natasha kicked the tip of one shoe against the overturned mailbox they appeared to have used as a battering ram and raised an eyebrow.  “They must have fortified the door somehow.  This appears quite… robust.”

“That’s what you’re taking away from this.” Bucky’s hand flopped indecisively, not sure what part of the carnage he should be gesturing towards. “There was a fucking  _ riot  _ here, Nat!  Why wasn’t this on the news?”

She laughed humorlessly, then waved at something in one of the second floor windows.  Bucky followed her glance and caught a glimpse of brown hair as someone ducked out of sight.  “You’ve been in the business long enough to know why.  Don’t make me say it.”

_ They’re burying it,  _ he realized with a lurch.  He’d seen it when he’d been a war correspondent-- military in the streets, beating a dictator’s will into the unwilling flesh of protesters while the newspapers mouthed along.  The truth would leak out in text messages and tweets (it was impossible to suppress it completely in a country like this) but no one outside of the city would know.

“If they’re burying it, why are we here?” He demanded, running a rough hand through his hair to try to find some calm.  In his mind, he was in a dark room with his hands bound behind his back and the bottoms of his feet burning from the slap of rubber hoses.  “If we can’t print--”

Natasha stared at him like he was a complete idiot. “ _ They’re _ burying it,” She emphasized.  “ _ I _ am not.  It won’t be like before.”

The dented door of the CDC slammed open, and Darcy waved them in, looking furtively up and down the street.  At the sight of movement, a crowd started to stir in the shadows.   
  
  


“To clarify,” Natasha said in her calm reports voice over the sound of the people outside banging on the locked doors, “Your plan for outreach following our initial news story, and the ongoing public reaction… is a kissing booth.”

She was sitting with her legs neatly crossed and tucked under the blue plastic chair they’d cleared of files for her use, pen poised over a pad, the image of professionalism.  Darcy tried to imagine working for this woman, instead of Jane, and felt a sudden sympathy for Bucky.  He seemed subdued this morning, pallid and sweaty like someone trying to kick an illness.

To her left, Darcy heard Jane open her mouth.  Darcy glared. 

Jane opened her mouth again, then closed it, scratching at the rubber band that held her hair in a disheartened ponytail.  “...My plan was the article.”  She finally admitted, and Nat’s pen darted across her paper.  

Darcy regretted having sat down.  It left Jane too far away to kick.  She smiled sunnily, hoping her face communicated promises of retribution, and turned back to the reporter.  “And now that that plan has  _ failed _ ,”  She reminded her boss, “We are free to proceed with  _ my  _ infinitely preferable plan, the kissing booth.”

Jane chewed on her lip, casting a pleading glance at Natasha as if the woman would help her.  “I just thought if people  _ knew _ … People are smart, they should be able to understand--”

“A person is smart,” Darcy interrupted.  “People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it.”

She waited for a reaction, and was greeted by three blank stares.  “My god, what do you people do in your free time,” Darcy muttered, shaking her head, then pulled her professionalism on like a brand new Edgar suit.  “What I’m sure Dr. Foster intended to convey, is that the CDC was unprepared for the level of interest the public has displayed towards this issue.  Fortunately, our office had arranged for a booth at this year’s Stark Expo.  It was originally intended to educate the public about our safe sex initiatives in the schools, but given recent events, it has been re-purposed.”

“ _ Jane _ ,”  Darcy said pointedly-- the woman was attempting to wander covertly out of the room, sensing that they had passed some point of no return and that this was now Darcy’s show. “And Dr. Helen Cho will be there to answer questions and distribute informational pamphlets, while I solicit new participants for our study on the effects of the anti-virus.”

“By kissing them.”  Natasha confirmed, and Darcy frowned, trying to read the woman.

“Not just me-- although naturally, I have been vaccinated.”  Darcy did her best to look innocent, lowering her lashes like a demur maiden who would never offer to kiss half of New York.  “Some of our ‘super infectors’ have volunteered.  Anyone who wants to kiss one of them will be required to provide their contact information, and agree to report any adverse effects to the CDC.”

“And once these people have become infected,” Darcy felt there was a little too much emphasis on the work ‘infected’.  “With the anti-virus, it’s your hope that they’ll continue to spread it to the rest of the populace?”

Darcy pursed her lips, as if the idea had never occurred to her.  “Gosh, I hope so. If it doesn’t, I made too many shirts.”

Reaching under her chair, she pulled a hot pink t-shirt from a box, opening it to display the black text on the front.

“‘Kiss me, I’m contagious’?”  Bucky read, sounding incredulous.  “Is this… You’re serious?  Have you  _ seen  _ the mob out there?  There’s no way anyone’s going to show up to this thing for a kiss.”

“Okay, one--”  Darcy held up a finger to stop him, finally letting go of her facade of silly stupidity.  “They’re really hot.  Like, center of the sun hot.  Anyone would want to kiss them.  And two,” She displayed a second finger, “Tesseract is spreading in this city.  It is virulent, it is disfiguring, and it is deadly.  And they are ignoring it, because it’s a scary story, and they don’t want the public to panic.  And while they do that, it is going to get a foothold that we won’t be able to shake for generations.  This will  _ not  _ be another HIV epidemic, I refuse to let it happen.”

“No one wants that, but how is this going to help?”  Bucky protested, gesturing to the pink shirt still clasped in Darcy’s other hand.  “You’re--  _ they will not listen to you _ .  This is going to be an embarrassment.  For you, and the CDC.  How can you not see that?”

“How can  _ you  _ not see that we  _ need  _ to look stupid for this to work?”  Darcy snapped.  “We need to be too visible and ridiculous to ignore.  I don’t care how stupid I have to look, if it saves lives.  And this will.  The antivirus has an incredibly short incubation time-- most of the people who accept vaccination will be ready to reinfect someone else after a few hours.  If we push, really  _ push  _ right now, we can cut this off before it gets out of the city.  Before this becomes something we all just have to live with being afraid of.”

In the long moment of silence that followed her outburst they stared at each other, and Darcy found herself struck by how pale Bucky looked.   _ He seems… terrified,  _ she realized, before the clack of Natasha getting to her feet and walking across the floor startled her out of her her reverie. 

Darcy wasn’t sure what she expected the woman to do, but it wasn’t to fist a hand into her shirtfront, drag her forward, and kiss her.

It was a very professional kiss, if that was an adjective one could use-- thorough and a little impersonal-- but there was enough tongue that Darcy felt her libido stir the way the pet snake she’d had in high school used to when she turned its heat lamp on.

When the kiss ended and Darcy just stared at her, Natasha rolled her eyes and held out a hand.  “Give me the ugly shirt.”


	6. Chapter 6

Despite an uncomfortably persist interest in Darcy, Bucky hadn’t had any intention of lingering after their interview.   The chaos of the streets had pushed feelings and thoughts that he had believed to be long suppressed, and there was nothing he wanted more than to be alone.  There was a bottle of vodka in a dark bedroom calling his name.

Unfortunately, the crowd outside had other ideas.

“The movement’s got them all stirred up,” Natasha noted, peering at the cracks around the door like she could see something of substance in the scant space-- knowing Natasha, she probably could.  “We’ll have to use another exit.”

Darcy pursed her lips in thought, then shook her head abruptly and began digging in her purse. “Fuck that, I am  _ not _ climbing out of that tiny ass bathroom window like I’m a bride in a romcom escaping her shitty husband.”

Extracting her phone from a bag that seemed to contain a truly bewildering assortment of condoms, pamphlets, and at least two cans of pepper spray, she punched the first number in her speed dial, swiveling in little circles as she waited for them to pick up.  She was dressed more casually than the last time Bucky’d seen her, in comfortable looking black slacks with contrasting white pockets and a boat necked red cotton shirt, one flat shoe dangling off of her foot as she twisted her chair back and forth.  He found himself regretting something that was hard to define, wondering what it would have been like if she’d met the person he’d been before he’d been a war correspondent.  When it was easier for him to connect with people.

Too Involved in this line of thought, he was started by Darcys voice when the other side of the line picked up.  “Yo, Chocolachino, I need an evac.  Yes.  No.” She cast a sideways glance at Natasha, then shook her head.  “I think we have too many people for the bikes.   _ I’m  _ not too dignified for the sidecar, but others might be.”

She laughed at whatever Sam’s reply was, and Bucky tried to decide if he should be offended.  He settled on an unspecific but settled sense of annoyance as she chattered on about the continued assault on her clinic with the air of someone describing the difficulty had finding a parking spot.  At the end of the conversation, some sort of plan of action seemed to have been decided on.

“So we’ve just got to cool our heels for a half hour and then the boy’ll come get us.” She declared, pocketing her cellphone with the swagger of a gunslinger after a successful duel. “Sam said to say they’d be faster, but I guess Denier is across town and they need a diversion or something, so he ‘doesn’t want to hear anyone’s shit’ about the timetable.”

Natasha made a noncommittal noise, a little smile playing around her mouth.  Darcy tilted her head, examining the expression.  “You’re a huge troll, aren’t you?”

“I would say that she couldn’t possibly be a bigger one,” Bucky agreed, before he remembered he wasn’t planning on making conversation, “But Natasha loves exceeding expectations.”

Natasha shrugged fluidly, and Bucky rolled his eyes-- she was in one of her mysterious and inscrutable moods.  They’d be lucky if they got a full sentence out of her for the rest of the night.

“You know, I never got that one…” Darcy mused, still swiveling back and forth in her chair. “Had a few report cards that said, like, ‘defies expectations’, but I feel that was intended to be criticism.  I did play well with others though.”

They both glanced at him, and Bucky realized now that he’d commented once, he was stuck. They were going to have to spend the next thirty minutes making stupid ‘ice breaker’ conversation with each other like it was a goddamned board meeting.

“They didn’t do things like that at my school.” The words sounded like they’d been drug out of him by force. “It was pass/fail.”

“Oh, like, sort of a Montessori thing, or…?” Darcy sat up, looking interested. A piece of hair was falling in her face, and Bucky had a brief flash of what she had looked like in that hotel bed, her curls spread out on the sheets because all the pillows had been shoved onto the floor.  It was hard for him to think about it without getting too involved in the memory.

“Gifted,” Bucky did his best to make himself completely unintelligible, turning his head into his shoulder as he spoke. If Darcy’s wrinkled forehead was any indication, he was successful.

“It was a school for the gifted.” Natasha announced, her face somehow communicating an eye roll without actually doing it. “He was a tiny genius who ‘excelled academically and athletically’.”

Not for the first time, Bucky regretted not getting to the microfiche of that newspaper article before Natasha found it.

“Huh.” Tapping the end of a pen against her lips, Darcy gave him the same considering look he remembered from the wedding-- like there was some test he was either passing or failing, and it was far too late for him to do anything about it. “So I’m guessing there are a lot of embarrassing childhood photos.”

“Ask Steve,” Bucky suggested, abandoning the attempt to clutch onto what was left of his dignity. “He’s always trying to show somebody his stupid photo albums.”

“It would be nice for us to bond…” Darcy mused, her pen still lingering near her mouth, drawing his attention to the way her lipstick was a little discolored (apparently Natasha favored more orange undertones in her makeup than Darcy did).

It was beginning to disturb him, how much he seemed to be aware of her.  How focused he was on her body, specifically, like some twelve year old punk who had just figured out what breasts were.  He’d never acted like this with a woman before,  _ especially _ one he’d already slept with.  It was absurd and childish, and felt completely outside of his control.

Staring at the smudged red of her mouth, Bucky felt a bone-deep sense of self-disgust.  It wasn’t an unfamiliar sensation.

He was mentally recommitting himself to an evening of drinking when Steve walked in with a paper bag, glowing with enough health and happiness to star in a bottled water commercial. “Sam said you needed these?”

Darcy didn’t so much ‘grab’ the bag, it was more of a leap. “ _ Bagels.” _

“I would normally express concern about the amount of complex carbohydrates you seem to be consuming,” Steve watched in amusement as Darcy tossed an unworthy ‘Everything’ bagel onto her desk in search of something more appealing. “But under the circumstances, it might be wise to carbo load.”

“Blah blah fitness talk, blah blah I have the abs of a Greek statue, blah blah.” Darcy raised her eyebrows at Natasha, then tossed her a bagel. “Are you suggesting I waste food, Steven? Because there are starving children in Africa.”

“I would never ask you to do that.  I just wish that my husband would stop--”

“Why do you hate joy, man?” Sam interrupted, walking across the room to ruffle Darcy’s hair while she slapped at him. “I know your mom’s cooking, don’t pretend your body isn’t at least 50% potatoes.”

“Plant-based starches--” Steve began, only to be drowned out by two simultaneous raspberries.

“The man will go to any lengths to justify his love of mashed potatoes.” Sam whispered loudly, digging through Darcy’s bag and emerging with a pretzel bread roll. “He ate a whole dinner bowl of them once, hand to god.”

“We hate most in others those qualities we don’t like in ourselves.” Steve agreed, catching the roll when Sam tossed it his way. “I only want you to have a better life than I did, my child.”

“Is this mother fucker ‘ _ my child’ me _ , when he’s like, four years older than me on a good day?” Darcy asked the air, looking around the space above her head as if searching for help from above. “First he steals my ex boyfriend, way after we’ve broken up, when it was definitely not stealing, and now he’s my childing me.  Where will it end?”

“‘Like four years’?” Steve quoted, giving her an incredulous look.  “Do you really not know how old I am?”

Darcy waved a hand dismissively and didn’t answer the question. “So, not that I don’t appreciate snacks, but are we planning on leaving soon? Because I have been at work for twelve hours, and I’m about five minutes away from opening the doors and letting nature take its course.”

“Twelve hours?” Jane asked, looking up from a pile of papers in surprise. “That’s not so bad.”

“No one listen to Jane, it  _ is _ ‘so bad’, Jane is wrong.” Darcy stared aggressively, until her boss finally began to avoid eye contact. “If you have a car, we would all like to get into it now, and leave this horrible horrible place forever. Or, you know, until Monday.”

Sam pulled his phone out, then looked pointedly at the desk where the condom packets and pepper spray from Darcy’s purse were still spread. 

“It’s all dead to me.” She told him, collecting her phone and iPod from the pile and leaving everything else where it lay.

Sam shrugged, then tapped out a message on his phone, and something outside exploded.


End file.
